on my old bp6 i had lots of trouble installing an sblive. as far as i know, creative does not support dual cpu configurations for any of their soundcards. if you install the card and use the basic legacy drivers found in w2k the card will work. however, this only gives basic functionality. the more advanced features such as 3d sound will not work. if you are happy with this you should leave it alone, do not install the fancy creative drivers with all of the bells and whistles as this will cause major instability. creative is aware of the problem and as far as i know is not planning on addressing it. if anyone knows otherwise, please post.
before you despair, there is a way to get the card to work under dual configuration. i don't have the link with me but if you go to the microsoft w2k website and do a search for 'cpu affinity' you should be able to find a file and instructions that allows you to assign all of the soundcard processes to one cpu. this allows the soundcard to function as if it were on a single cpu mb. it works pretty well actually and is not difficult to set up. there is still some flakiness with various features on the card but i'm not sure how much is related to bad drivers as opposed to dual cpu issues. basically, i hate the sblive card, i think it's been really oversold. if anyone can recommend a card of comparable quality that has full stable functionality in this configuration please let me know. please don't mention any turtle beach products, that's a whole 'nother can of worms...
as far as i know, irqs and pci slots have nothing to do with the instability.
sochow!
S.